Ethnobiology Conference, Berkeley

That was the most interesting conference I have ever attended. After several years of reading through articles, doing interviews, tentatively teaching: this the reward. Good people. Interesting data. Good arguments. Wow.

Perhaps the most striking thing was the huge range of methodologicial maturity. There were presentations that sounded like exotic tour offers, flashy but also extremely patronizing. The well-meaning liberals and the developing-world bioprospectors were both in evidence. But—some of the papers I heard there did combine theoretical sophistication with rigorous research methods. Key notions that resurfaced over and over were:
• multi-sited research
• migration
• hybridity
• the clear use of statistics
• historical depth
• the importance of shifting from ethnobotany to ethnoecology (that includes critters)
• the importance of literate or non-literate canons as determiners of conceptual inventory
• the economics and trade routes that connect collectors to markets and migrants to their home ecosystem.

I missed the Thursday night session on collaborations with indigenous communities, which would have been good, and a Friday afternoon session on ethno-ornithology, including a whole paper by Gregory Forth on bat classifcation. There was a jarring note from one contributor at the final paper, an overtly racist comment, that in being so jarring made clear how harmonious most of the proceedings were.

Important papers for me were those of

Tom Carlson on clinical practice that was not afraid of listening to the ethnomedicines of the clients
Jennifer Sowerwine on multi-sited studies of Iu Mien in California
Elda Miriam Aldasoro Maya, again a multi-sited study of Ñuu Savi (Mixtec) immigrants in Oaxaca and Hillsboro, Oregon
Ranier Bussman who delivered a double whammy with real historical depth on comparative studies across the Ecuador/Peru border
Gary Martin on marketplace studies in Marrakesh, work which I shamelessly have to borrow in order to pursue my own research in the Kathmandu marketplaces.

Next year’s conference is in the Arkansas Ozarks.